[Rd] names(unlist(...)) may construct corrupt strings (PR#1524)

[Thomas Lumley]

On Tue, 7 May 2002 oehl_list@gmx.de wrote:

> names(unlist(...)) seems to be able to construct corrupt strings
> detected via: two identical strings behave different in paste
> observed in RW1.4.1 and RW1.5.0
> pure replication code after output
>
> Best
>
>
> Jens Oehlschlägel
>
>
> > l <- names(unlist(list(aa = list(bb = 1))))
> > l
> [1] "aa.bb"

This is the same problem with do_paste that showed up with read.dta. If
you look at the C level, LENGTH() is 6 for l and 5 for "aa.bb".

In general we have the problem that a string has two ways of defining its
length:  LENGTH() and strlen()

Most functions use just one of these, but paste() uses LENGTH() to set up
the buffer and then strcpy() to copy into it. The string l has LENGTH 6,
but strlen 5, and the result from paste() is a string with a null as its
sixth character, which thus appears to be a five-character string.

Given that this is the second appearance of the problem perhaps do_paste()
should be changed instead of (as well as?) unlist().

	-thomas


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